Fayetteville’s budget season is growing more tense by the week, with what began as routine deliberations now unraveling into a tense scramble at City Hall.
On Monday, Fayetteville City Council members clashed with senior staff, saying the proposal misses the mark and leaves them hunting for dollars to avoid a tax hike.
The city manager’s $322 million fiscal 2027 budget, introduced May 14, includes a 3‑cent property tax increase and a $10 annual solid‑waste fee hike.
Staff planned for four work sessions and a June 8 adoption. But after two contentious meetings—May 28 and June 1—marked by interruptions, sharp questioning, and rising frustration, that timeline has collapsed. Mayor Mitch Colvin acknowledged the council will miss the June 8 deadline. State law requires budget adoption before July 1, which is the start of the city’s fiscal year.
The council has now called a special meeting Thursday to continue discussing the budget proposal.
Mayor Questions Whether Budget Follows Council Priorities
Colvin has emerged as the budget’s most vocal critic, directing his frustration squarely at senior staff and City Manager Doug Hewett.
Each February, the council spends two days at its strategic planning retreat—a process meant to guide the coming year’s budget. Colvin said the proposal council received this year failed to reflect that work.
“I felt like I wasted our time,” Colvin said. He said that the budget process works by the city council coming “up with what we want to see happen in this community based on what the people who elect us say they want, and we give it to you to come back with options.”
“To me, this wasn’t your best work,” the mayor said.
Colvin argued the proposal forces elected officials to now “hunt for dollars” to fund the very priorities they adopted in February. He pushed to reframe the debate from “tax or no tax” to what he called “alignment or no alignment”—whether the budget matches council’s direction at all.
Colvin repeatedly questioned why items that directly track with council’s top goal of public safety were not recommended, while newer and less clearly aligned projects made the funding list.
Hewett pushed back, saying the recommended budget follows the same principles the city has used for decades.
“This budget is fundamentally not drafted any different than the budgets we have drafted for 20 years with the strategic plan,” Hewett said.
He told council the proposal was built around “simple principles—people, and finishing what we started”—and that the city ran out of money before it could add new initiatives.
Hewett conceded, however, that if the council felt he “missed the mark” and would like things done differently, that he is prepared to receive that direction.
Rising Tension in the Chamber
Colvin’s rebuke followed a tense meeting on May 28, where he warned that “next week will be just as spicy as this one, if not more.”
Several council members grew visibly impatient with lengthy staff presentations, interrupting at times to demand fewer sales pitches and more clarity on cuts, trade‑offs, and the tax burden on residents.
Colvin complained that meetings were overloaded with staff explanation and underloaded with council direction.
“We leave the meetings with a lot of information coming in, but not our stuff getting captured going out,” he said at last week’s meeting.
One of the most scrutinized topics on May 28 was the Office of Community Safety (OCS) budget. The department was created in 2024 to provide non‑enforcement responses to crises ranging from mental‑health emergencies to sudden loss of shelter.
Last year, council set aside $2.3 million in the fiscal year 2026 budget for OCS in its first full year. That was $287,000 more than what is proposed in the fiscal year 2027 budget.
That cut drove at least half a dozen residents to speak against the budget during public hearings last week and Monday.
As councilmembers pressed staff for a comparison of the budget from the current budget, they learned the department ultimately spent only $194,000 of its $2.3 million allocation..
Assistant City Manager Jeff Yates told councilmembers the decrease is not a rollback but a technical correction—a “true‑up” of the fiscal 2026 placeholder estimate.
When the city built the department, he said, staff based its budget on similar programs in other cities. But OCS spent far less because it was still ramping up leadership, structure, and contracts, leaving little time to use its full $2.3 million.
OCS hired its first director, John Jones, in June 2025—the same month the fiscal 2026 budget was adopted.
Hewett echoed that explanation, saying the department is still maturing. He cautioned against inflating the budget faster than OCS can realistically deploy.
“I would be hesitant to put too much in the OCS budget for next year,” Hewett said, adding that Jones’ goal is to spend the entire allocation in the coming year. But if council raised the budget beyond the proposed level, “despite his best efforts and ours, he could not go through all of that.”
A tense exchange unfolded when Colvin pressed staff on how unspent OCS funds would be used. Yates said some dollars will be spent before year‑end on “safe space” grants and other initiatives. Staff also plans to use remaining funds to help renovate the Blue Street Center, which would house OCS staff, Yates said.
He added that a budget amendment will come to council soon.
Colvin argued that, from council’s perspective, it looked like staff pre‑earmarking leftover OCS money for Blue Street. He said council needs to be able to follow the money—from OCS back into the city’s fund balance and then out again—so they can explain it to residents.
Public Safety a Flashpoint
Councilmember Deno Hondros challenged staff’s assertion that the city could maintain the same level of service in public safety under the proposed budget.
Even with the Police Department’s budget climbing from $73.5 million to $76 million, Hondros pointed out that core operating lines were actually being cut.
“Is it fully honest and transparent to say that it’s the same level of service,” Hondros asked. “It’s just not. You can spin it any way you want to—it’s just not.”
Hondros said staff should have cut elsewhere to protect police operations:
“Give them the tools they need to carry out their mission to the level of service that the taxpaying residents demand and deserve,” he said.
He accused staff of asking council to “raise taxes again in the name of public safety when it doesn’t have to be that way.”
Yates said “that’s a choice the council can make.”
“This is our best recommendation based on what we believe is necessary to operate the city next year,” he said.
The exchange grew tense enough that Councilmember Shaun McMillan stepped in to urge colleagues to keep the conversation focused on policy, not personal accusations.
“We could question and grapple with the budget without making claims in terms of anybody’s integrity or any of the staff’s integrity,” McMillan said. “I think we could create an environment and maintain an environment of respect in here. It starts with us guys. So let’s remember how we set the tone.”
Government reporter Rachel Heimann Mercader can be reached at rheimann@cityviewnc.com or 910-988-8045.
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